Gregg Williams: Sean Payton and I are friends for life

Posted by Josh Alper on September 14, 2018, 3:49 PM EST

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Saints coach Sean Payton said this week that he has a “great relationship” with Browns defensive coordinator Gregg Williams, who held the same job on Payton’s staff in New Orleans from 2009-2011 and will be in New Orleans this Sunday.

Williams’ departure was followed by the NFL handing out suspensions to both coaches after their investigation into a bounty program that was in place for the defense during Williams’ time with the team. When Williams returned to New Orleans with the Rams in 2016, the Saints won 49-21 and some Saints players thought the game meant something extra to Payton.

Some also wondered if Payton may have run the score up in that win, but Williams said on Friday that he doesn’t believe that was the case.

“No. No, no, no,” Williams said, via the New Orleans Times-Picayune. “Sean and I are very good friends, and there are still a lot of people in that organization [I know]. I think Sean is, if not one of the best, the best coach I have ever had a chance to work with. He and I are friends for life. We’ll walk together for life with a Super Bowl trophy.”

That may be the case, but they’ll be on opposite sides this weekend and it seems unlikely anyone’s going to be taking it easy on their buddy.

13 responses to “Gregg Williams: Sean Payton and I are friends for life”

It’s hard to believe they are still great friends when Gregg is to some level responsible for Payton missing an entire season of football. Maybe the bond formed by winning a Super Bowl is stronger than the scorn that comes from a bounty scandal?

Gregg signed any and all sworn affidavits the league asked him to so that he could get back in their good graces and find a way out of his ‘indefinite’ suspension from the league.

Paul Tagliabue throwing out the suspensions of all the players tells you everything you need to know about the quality of Williams sworn statements and the evidence that ‘supported’ them.

Liberalsruineverything says:
September 14, 2018 at 5:52 pm
The cheating Saints will forever have a giant asterisk on their fake Super Bowl banner.
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What stupidity? Half the league’s players put money down on taking shots on opposing players for years, week in and week out. It wasn’t ethical and good for the league. The Saints got caught! There wasn’t a competitive edge, like PED’s.

It’s such a stupid comment to suggest there’s an imaginary asterisk next to the Saints’ super bowl! The only asterisk is the one next to the year Payton was suspended. He was suspended for an entire season. Maybe 6 games but the whole season???

Oh, that super bowl banner is not fake; it’s real. You can head to the dome and see for yourself! Educate yourself.

I see a couple of posters who are referring to the beating unleashed on Brett Favre. These same guys when referring to a hit leveled on Rodgers say essentially “Your guys should have blocked for him then” … that should be the only response a Saints fan has to make. It won’t shut them up though…because it’s ok to take out the opponent’s QB1 by any means necessary. You can see how the supposed fans of the Vikes who post here are promising that Aaron will once again be taken out this Sunday…and they’re proud of it.

Been a fan of Favre my entire life. Even Brett didn’t whine after that game…and went so far as to say that he’s been beat up worse than he was that day.

G Williams was a patsy for the league’s PR nightmare when all that stuff went down. Somebody had to take the fall and it turned out to be him, not that he was any more or less guilty than a lot of the players and coaches throughout the league. All that “Kill the head and the body will die” stuff always seemed to me like standard football-as-war metaphor, not an incitement to do anything specific. And back then the game was still hardcore. Knocking guys out of games was understood to be one way to win, and it was accepted fact from the high school level on up.

Take a look at the roughing the passer penalty on Myles Garret (on freaking 3rd and 4 inside the 10!) last weekend — which gave the Steelers a TD — and was therefore outcome determinative, to see how much the game has changed.